He shifts closer to her until his hip is touching hers, wraps his arm around her.
“People are bastards,” he says, kissing her forehead, and she breaks involuntarily into a snigger, glad of the opportunity to shift her mood. She hates talking about her dad. It always makes her chest tight and opens up all the old wounds.
V
She wants to photograph him, or sculpt him. Velvety pale skin, bee-stung lips that she imagines against her neck, her wrist, her thigh. Dark hair worn slightly long and messy, and his hands . . . Michelangelo couldn’t have sculpted better hands. The kind that can wield a broadsword or tear the heart out of a dragon. She glimpses the bare skin of his knees through slashes in his black jeans. He has perfect knees. An image of her kneeling before him, licking the skin of each knee, startles her with its sudden eroticism.
When he kisses her again, his hand slips to her breast, and she pulls away sharply.
“What’s wrong?” he says.
She feels embarrassed. “It’s just . . . I don’t know.” She wants to say it’s too early for that, she feels it’s much too early, but then he’s seventeen, and maybe for seventeen-year-olds it isn’t too early.
“You don’t like me,” he says. “That’s it, isn’t it?”
“No!” she says, straddling him, cupping his face with her hands. “I do like you.”
He fixes his eyes on hers. “Then why not?”
Slowly, she moves his hand under her shirt. It feels uncomfortable and nice. Something in her wants to run away but she grits her teeth and pushes the feeling down into her stomach.
“You can touch me, too,” he says.
“OK.”
He guides her hand to his crotch, unbuttoning his jeans and slipping her hand down his pants. She forces a smile onto her face as she touches it, the foreign hardness. She’s only ever done this with Jack, and that was after dating for four months. She and Jack are both virgins, but she still feels much less comfortable with Brodie than she did with Jack. She’s scared of being useless and disappointing.
It literally lasts a minute, maybe less. She yanks her hand away, trying not to show her disgust, as he strokes her face and buttons himself up.
“When are you going to break up with Rowan?” she says, wiping her hand discreetly on a clump of grass. She didn’t intend to say it, and she feels him flinch.
“Actually, it’s been on my mind,” he says, lighting up a cigarette.
“It has?”
He blows out a puff of smoke. “Timing has to be right, though. Her dad’s a policeman.”
She nods, but she doesn’t understand what this has to do with dumping Rowan. But then, a voice inside her reminds her that she’s only here until the end of the month. She’s only fifteen. She can hardly just stay on the island. She’ll have to go home, and he’ll be here, alone. No. Not alone. With Rowan. The girlfriend he’s had since he was fourteen years old. Three and a half years against five stolen nights.
“I liked the photo you gave me,” he says as they walk home. It’s four in the morning, and she can’t help but yawn into her hand.
“Thank you.” The photo was a Polaroid of herself that she took in her bedroom.
“Do you think you could give me a few more?” he says. She turns. “Maybe some sexy ones?”
She searches his face, realizing at once that her understanding of what “sexy” means doesn’t match his.
“Would that be OK?” he says, faux-sincere. “Or is it too early for you?”
He slips a hand under her shirt, touching her breast, and she squeezes her eyes shut, pushing away the urge to remove his hand. Why doesn’t it feel nice? she thinks. Why does it feel like he’s taking something from her?